Robert Baird

Another week, another beautiful-sounding, wonderfully packaged reissue from Analogue Productions.

Was just listening to the deluxe edition of Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, which is to be released tomorrow, May 19, when the news of Chris Cornell's unexpected death was announced. Very sad news and our sympathies go out to his family and all who loved his music in Soundgarden and Audioslave, and on the solo records.

Dominic Miller: Silent Light
Dominic Miller, guitar; Miles Bould, percussion
ECM 2518 (CD). 2017. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Jan Erik Kongshaug, eng. DDD? TT: 41:06
Performance *****
Sonics *****

It was a pairing that seemed right from the very start: ECM's founder, Manfred Eicher, a man renowned for having an unmatched ear for talent and exacting sound-engineering skills; and guitarist Dominic Miller, an internationalist who was born in Argentina, raised in Racine, Wisconsin, and now lives in Provence, France, and who's spent more than 20 years playing and writing with Sting. Along the way, Miller has been a hired guitar slinger with everyone from the Pretenders and Chris Botti to Rod Stewart and Plácido Domingo. He's made 13 solo records, has recorded the music of J.S. Bach on guitar, and says his favorite album is Deep Purple's Made in Japan.

Fitzgerald's influence on jazz vocals, celebrated in a flurry of reissues from Universal Music, is almost unimaginably vast.